Free Republic

Salim Idris, commander of the Free Syrian Army... said the attack on the rebel enclaves around the capital on Aug. 21 was ordered as pressure mounted on Assad -- even from his own supporters -- for a reprisal to the Aug. 8 attack, in which rebels fired rockets at his motorcade as it rolled through the Malki neighborhood of Damascus, headed to a local mosque for prayers marking the end of Ramadan. Assad is not believed to have been in the motorcade at the time of the rocket attack, but the brazen assault on the president's own doorstep had a...

Vladimir Putin has rejected US intelligence claims that Bashar al-Assad's regime used chemical weapons in Syria, saying it would be "utter nonsense" for government troops to use such tactics in a war it was already winning. "That is why I am convinced that [the chemical attack] is nothing more than a provocation by those who want to drag other countries into the Syrian conflict, and who want to win the support of powerful members of the international arena, especially the United States," Putin told journalists in Vladivostok.

Syrians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta say Saudi Arabia provided chemical weapons for an Al-Qaeda linked terrorist group which they blame for the August 21 chemical attack in the region, a Mint Press News report says. The article co-authored by a veteran AP reporter, said interviews with doctors, residents, anti-government forces and their families in Ghouta suggest the terrorists in question received chemical weapons via Saudi spymaster Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud. The report quoted the father of a militant as saying that his son and 12 others were killed inside a tunnel used...

Okay Freeper Family, you know President Obama is itching to pull the trigger on Syria to deflect from his failed policies and train wreak administration, but something about all the evidence of a Syrian Government Chemical Attack just does not pass the smell test. Many of you know I am a veterans and here is where I need some of my fellow vets to help me understand something. Mr. Kerry in his push for action stated that less than 1,500 people were killed in a government launched chemical attack, now that is a very low number of deaths from a...

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected the American evidence that Syrian forces used chemical weapons, calling the suggestion "utter nonsense." "While the Syrian army is on the offensive, saying that it is the Syrian government that used chemical weapons is utter nonsense," Putin told journalists in Vladivostok, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. He urged the United States to present its evidence to the UN Security Council and cautioned President Obama about the consequences of getting involved. Read: Still Undecided, Obama Favors 'Limited, Narrow' Act in Syria "I would like to address Obama as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate: before using...

U.N. experts investigating a poison gas attack in Syria left the country on Saturday, paving the way for the United States to lead military strikes to punish President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. President Barack Obama said the United States, which has five cruise-missile equipped destroyers in the region, was planning "limited, narrow" military action to punish Assad for an attack that Washington said killed 1,429 people. "We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale," Obama said on Friday after Washington unveiled an intelligence assessment concluding Assad's forces were to blame for...

Slow Down In a rush to start a military strike against Syria, the Nobel Peace prize recipient is being told to slow down by the UN and European countries. Obama’s request for the assistance of old allies in his mad scramble to protect al Qaeda-led rebels from the Syrian Regime was soundly rejected by Britain. Valerie Jarrett must have demanded Obama strike Assad immediately. After all, the rebellion is being influenced by the Mo-Bros with Saudi oil money. When you read anything that says Brotherhood fighters it actually means al Qaeda. Chemical attack On August 21st, chemical weapons were used...

David Cameron will almost certainly get his Syrian war. Who will fight it, let alone who will win it, remains unclear. But who will lose it is already known — the Christians. The relentless persecution of Christ’s followers is foretold in the Gospels. Suffering is portrayed as the pathway to triumph. The global position today conforms quite closely to that picture. Three quarters of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians — the expanding part — now live outside the largely tolerant West. At the same time, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that Christians suffer more persecution than...

The US strike against Syria has yet to begin, and doubts abound regarding the scope and effectiveness of any such attack. Most pressing for Israel is the question of what happens in the hours and days after an American strike. But several other important questions have been left unanswered in all of the analyses and scholarly articles written in the nine days since the chemical attack on civilians in the suburbs of Damascus. First, when will the US strike and how far will it go? >>SNIP<< Second, what will happen in Syria on the morning after the attack? >>SNIP<< The...

Slow Down In a rush to start a military strike against Syria, the Nobel Peace prize recipient is being told to slow down by the UN and European countries. Obama’s request for the assistance of old allies in his mad scramble to protect al Qaeda-led rebels from the Syrian Regime was soundly rejected by Britain. Valerie Jarrett must have demanded Obama strike Assad immediately. After all, the rebellion is being influenced by the Mo-Bros with Saudi oil money. When you read anything that says Brotherhood fighters it actually means al Qaeda. Chemical attack On August 21st, chemical weapons were used...

---- snip “I would like to address Obama as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate: Before using force in Syria, it would be good to think about future casualties,” Putin told Russian news agencies in Vladivostok during a tour of the country’s flood-stricken Far East. “Russia is urging you to think twice before making a decision on an operation in Syria,” he said. --- snip “While the Syrian army is on the offensive, saying that it is the Syrian government that used chemical weapons is utter nonsense,” Putin said. On top of that, he said, the Obama administration’s “claims that proof...

U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013 The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013. We further assess that the regime used a nerve agent in the attack. These all-source assessments are based on human, signals, and geospatial intelligence as well as a significant body of open source reporting.Our classified assessments have been shared with the U.S. Congress and key international partners. To protect sources and methods, we cannot publicly release all available intelligence...

American intelligence agencies had indications three days beforehand that the Syrian regime was poised to launch a lethal chemical attack that killed more than a thousand people and has set the stage for a possible U.S. military strike on Syria. The disclosure -- part of a larger U.S. intelligence briefing on Syria's chemical attacks -- raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions for the American government. First and foremost: What, if anything, did it do to notify the Syrian opposition of the pending attack?

Below is the government's assessment of the "Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013." It is exactly as expected, putting the full blame on Assad. What however is absolutely mindblowing is the following: "We have identified one hundred videos attributed to the attack, many of which show large numbers of bodies exhibiting physical signs consistent with, but not unique to, nerve agent exposure. The reported symptoms of victims included unconsciousness, foaming from the nose and mouth, constricted pupils, rapid heartbeat, and difficulty breathing. Several of the videos show what appear to be numerous fatalities with no visible...

The White House released a four-page assessment Friday laying out the evidence the government used to conclude that Syria launched a chemical weapons attack last week, as President Obama continues to lay the groundwork for retaliatory strikes. “We assess with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out the chemical weapons attack against opposition elements in the Damascus suburbs on August 21,” the report, labeles the “U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.” The assessment said the attack, on 12 locations in the Damascus area, killed at least 1,429 people, including at...

No mention of specific agent in Kerry report.

Yesterday the Telegraph's Evans-Pritchard [8] dug up a note that we had posted almost a month [9]ago, relating to the "secret" meeting between Saudi Arabia and Russia, in which Saudi's influential intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan met with Putin and regaled him with gifts, including a multi-billion arms deal and a promise that Saudi is "ready to help Moscow play a bigger role in the Middle East at a time when the United States is disengaging from the region", if only Putin would agree to give up his alliance with Syria's al-Assad and let Syria take over, ostensibly...

<p>This article is a collaboration between Dale Gavlak reporting for Mint Press News (also of the Associated Press) and Yahya Ababneh.</p> <p>Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.</p>

Paul also explained that he had difficulty seeing any American interests in the Syrian conflict. “I can’t see fighting to impose Sharia law in Syria,” Paul said. “I can’t see sending my son to fight with Islamic rebels against Christians. I also can’t see my son going to fight on the same side as al Qaeda.” Under Sharia law, Paul noted, Christians would be persecuted for blasphemy, citing a woman in Pakistan who was jailed for blasphemy after she drank from a cup shared by Muslim workers. “That is not something I want to send our boys and girls to...

The Obama administration has selectively used intelligence to justify military strikes on Syria, former military officers with access to the original intelligence reports say, in a manner that goes far beyond what critics charged the Bush administration of doing in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain, France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel’s famed Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion reached by the original report. The doctored report...